1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to a developing device including a two-component developer including toner and a magnetic carrier, and an image forming apparatus including the developing device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an electrophotographic image forming apparatus, light that is changed to correspond to image information is irradiated to a photoconductor to form an electrostatic latent image on a surface of the photoconductor, toner is supplied to the electrostatic latent image to develop the electrostatic latent image into a visible toner image, and then the visible toner image is transferred and fixed onto a recording medium, thereby printing an image corresponding to the visible toner image on the recording medium.
An image forming method using an electrophotographic image forming apparatus can be classified as a one-component development method using a one-component developer including toner, or as a two-component development method using a two-component developer including toner and a carrier in which only the toner is used for development on a photoconductor.
However, in the two-component development method, if an image forming speed is increased or a relatively high coverage image is consecutively printed, toner consumption per unit hour in a developing device is increased, and corresponding to the increased toner consumption, an amount and a speed of toner supplied to the developing device need to be increased. However, the increase in the toner supply amount results in a large developing device, and the increase in the toner supply speed results in a toner charge defect and non-uniform image concentration.